Paper's abstract

Julien Cantegreil, Adolf Reinach, legal theoricist?
Reinach has not yet found his place within the Pantheon of legal theoricists. Husserl, Kantorowicz, Radbruch, Villey… have yet commented on his works, and his ideas have recently been reevaluated in philosophy of knowledge. The understanding of the theoretical impasse and the slight practical interest of his intuitionist approach had only suggested to direct phenomenological research in law theory towards the late works of Husserl. Putting aside this familiar issue, we propose here to read de novo Reinach through his earliest work, his 1905 Dissertation on the Concept of Causation in Criminal Law. Reinach appears not only to exemplify the contradictions of the fin de siècle positivism, but to greatly help conceptualizing causation in law. Reinach is certainly a precursor for the speech act theory. To read him as a precursor for causation, however, gives his work more depth and relevance in the field of legal theory.

Key Words : Reinach, legal theory, phenomenology, positivism, cause, language
t. 49 : 2005, p. 401-416

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